There is much great ongoing work on climate, and one thing that intrigues me are periods of multi-decadal
variability, followed by great climactic jumps. This -a major tangent- brings us to the greatest novel of 20th century (in here I'm clipping bits from its Wiki):
Robert Musil "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften"
The protagonist is a 32-year-old mathematician named Ulrich who is in
search of a sense of life and reality but fails to find it. A kind of keenly analytical passivity is
his most typical attitude.
The story takes place in 1913 in Vienna, starts this way:
THERE was a depression over the Atlantic. It was travelling eastwards, towards an area of high pressure over Russia, and still showed no tendency to move northwards around it. The isotherms and isotheres were fulfilling their functions. The atmospheric temperature was in proper relation to the average annual temperature, the temperature of the coldest as well as of the hottest month, and the a-periodic monthly variation in temperature. The rising and setting of the sun and of the moon, the phases of the moon, Venus and Saturn’s rings, and many other important phenomena, were in accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks.The vapour in the air was at its highest tension, and the moisture in the air was at its lowest. In short, to use an expression that describes the facts pretty satisfactorily, even though it is somewhat old-fashioned: it was a fine August day in the year 1913.
In Part II, Pseudoreality Prevails, Ulrich joins the so-called
"Collateral Campaign" or "Parallel Campaign", preparations for a
celebration in honor of 70 years of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph's reign in year 1918, a committee to
explore a suitable way to demonstrate Austria's political, cultural, and
philosophical supremacy via a festival which will capture the minds of
the Austrian Emperor's subjects and people of the world forever.
Multi-decadal
variability
rules. Not a hint in more than 1,700 pages that in a year this world will not exist.
Musil was slow - I read a sentence in the
original (usually a page), then I read the translation, and I STILL do
not get it. Only when you get deep into volume 2 you discover that the
book is about something totally different than what you thought it was.
Like learning physics. Musil was trained as a physicist, perhaps by Mach.
There are two translations, I have both.
